While I know a lot about electricity and home/business wiring, when it comes to power distribution, I am not all that familiar. These giant capacitors are used in power distribution, but what do they actually do? Anyone know? I have seen smaller varieties of these on power poles. They look like pole transformers, but the HV line just enters on insulator and exits the other one. I never knew why they are there..... They are only used on HV lines.

What are High Voltage shunt capacitors for?

Jan 29, 2015 3 Replies

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Jerry.Tan 11 years ago

While I know a lot about electricity and home/business wiring, when it comes to power distribution, I am not all that familiar. These giant capacitors are used in power distribution, but what do they actually do? Anyone know?

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I have seen smaller varieties of these on power poles. They look like pole transformers, but the HV line just enters on insulator and exits the other one. I never knew why they are there..... They are only used on HV lines.

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Tony Hwang 11 years ago

Hi, You can Google about it yourself. Believe it is used for power factor correction.

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Pico Rico 11 years ago

yep. Many electrical loads are inductive, and these capacitors counteract the inductive loads, allowing current and voltage to remain more in phase with each other, thus cutting down on wasted energy transmission and loss.

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micky 11 years ago

Those are cyborgs mating. The lower picture is their three children.

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